


Sand Storm

by Albion19



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albion19/pseuds/Albion19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey, on the look out for new ships, comes across someone looking at an old freighter while a storm approaches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought that there was a glimmer of recognition when they saw each other so here's my take on it.

Jakku, the scrap yard at the edge of the universe. The desert was littered with the remnants of battleships, great hulks that the ever shifting sands hide and reveal from week to week. It is a graveyard and the sand is choked.

Rey shifts a little, watching a ship arc over the horizon, flying lower before disappearing behind a sandbank. Heart racing and stomach tightening with anticipation she turns back to the Nima Outpost, unable to turn away. The ship is new, she is sure.

The only people who come to this forsaken planet land either to sell or buy but Jakku is just one planet in a thousand, the scars of war are everywhere and each planet holds its share of ruins. She often likes to imagine what those planets are like and the people lucky enough to reside on them. One day she will know, she will see great seas of water and lands rising from waves.

She has dreamed of it.

Reaching the trading yard she turns, noting that the gigantic hulk of the crashed destroyer is all but gone. A sandstorm is approaching, one whipped into being by fierce winds that morning. She won’t see her bed tonight but she has plenty to choose from down there.

But first the ship.

*

It’s small and unmarked. Certainly not First Order but she moves closer slowly, scarf over her lower face and places her goggles over her eyes. People don’t take kindly to scavengers eyeing their property. As she estimate how many portions she could get for stripping it for parts something in her throbs with dull disappointment. The ship has nothing to do with her, she can feel it. Hope is a painful thing.

Sighing she turns to find a place to hide from the approaching storm and spots a shadow cast by the setting sun. She looks up at the ship that shadow is cast on and smiles despite herself. She may be a scavenger but she is an honest one. Staff held tightly in her hand she approaches the old freighter and sees a hooded figure looking up at it, one gloved hand placed against a side.

“I wouldn’t waste your money,” she comments, words muffled by the scarf. The hooded figure does not turn but tilts its head.

“…Junk?” his voice is low and clearly human. Not a druid.

“Practically an antique. It’s been here for years, no one will trade for it.”

As she says this the man turns to her and she can see a smile in the shadows of his hood but when he lowers it his face is impassive. He is young but older than she is, with long mournful features. Rey stares at him, wanting him to be familiar but he is not. At least she doesn’t think so…

“It’s garbage,” he says with bite and lowers his hand. He gazes at her calmly and Rey realises she is completely covered. She lifts a hand but hesitates. She should go, she should find cover but she pushes her goggles and scarf aside.

The man narrows his eyes, his body inclining towards her. He is very tall and she has to crane her neck. As she had done he tries to place her but just as quickly as the inspection began it finishes with clear dismissal.  No one important. All of this is unsaid but Rey, who is not unfamiliar with being ignored, feels a flare of indignation.

_I hope his ship gets buried in the sand, the lanky scarecrow with it._

She gives him one pointed look of disdain, which makes his eyebrows rise, before she turns and walks away. The ship may be a rusting bucket but it’s a bucket with no holes. She finds the lever to lower the ramp and the noise makes the man follow her. He watches her step onto the ramp and shakes his head.

“I think that belongs to someone.” Does he sound annoyed? Why?

“Clearly someone who doesn’t care. What is it to you?”

“Nothing…You’re a scavenger.” His eyes flick up and down her and Rey shrugs.

“And you are?”

“…a prince,” he answers, a gleam in his eyes.

“Of course you are.” The man is mad. “As much as I’m a princess…” Rey shakes her head and moves to the top of the ramp. In the distance the sand has blocked out the sun, the storm so close now she can taste it. Wind blowing gritty against her exposed face she stares down at the man.

“You should leave before your ship gets buried. A storm is approaching.”

“I know,” he answers softly and looks back up at the old ship. He places a hand against it again and his eyes seem to dance with conflict. “The storm is of no concern…”

Something in Rey rises, a prickly alarm. He really is crazy.

“Well good luck with that,” she says and moves into the ship, hand on the lever to make the ramp rise. She can’t risk her life for a stranger, if he thinks he can withstand the sand then that’s on his head. “He’ll get in his ship and fly away…” but she remains standing there, the ramp frozen as sand begins to beat against the side of the ship.

“This thing should be buried like all the other war ships,” his voice is almost lost in the howl of the wind but she can hear the anger lacing through it.

“Warship? What are you talking about? Please, get back in your ship!” she says, the words bursting from her. He stands there, the storm whirling around him and as the last light breaks through the sand Rey sees something very strange.

The sand swoops and dives, streams of it twisting into patterns around his body and not a particle touches him. She watches, almost hypnotised, as the sand dances around before being pulled away by the wind and the man just stands there, looking at her, his hair flying.

It is the strangest thing she has ever seen and her body feels like every cell is electrified, a fizzing and ricocheting frenzy. It is beautiful. At the awed look on her face the man frowns, as if he had expected another reaction. Fear? Suddenly she is but not because of him. That feeling that makes her blood rush and sear reaches such a magnitude that it feels like a great force is crushing her. Scared she slams the lever down and the man and the sand disappears. Alone all she hears is the sand battering the ship but soon even that stops and the silence is rhythmically broken by her laboured breathing.

*

That night she dreams vivid, lucid dreams and wakes sweating, reaching for someone long gone. Her skin tingles, has not stopped since the encounter with the man and as she looks out of the deck windows that sensation fades into a persistent hum. She smiles in relief.

The Corellian YT-1300 is untouched and the man and ship are gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another snapshot, though unrelated to the first chapter. Takes place on Jakku and in the Falcon...How did Rey learn to use that mind trick on the Stormtrooper...?

Crouching down swiftly she pulls her goggles over her eyes, so that not a trace of skin shows. Unkar Plutt stands at the base of the ramp with a potential buyer, blocking her way out. It seems that Plutt is in luck, someone may finally take the freighter off his hands. The ship she has occupied for the night, a ship that has been rusting like an old bucket for years. Who would want to buy it?  Whoever the buyer they are going to be sorely swindled. Rey looks up through the metal floor above as footfalls vibrate through it and Plutt and the other man come to stand above her. Rey wills herself to stop breathing.

“The freighter is in working order, an antique to be sure but the hyperdrive is still functioning.”

“How have you stopped the scavengers taking it apart?” the man’s low voice issues from the depths of his hood. Rey thinks he must be sweating, dressed all in black in this heat.

“They work for me and they know the repercussions of taking something that belongs to me,” Plutt says with relish and Rey shudders. She has seen first hand what happens to those desperate or foolish enough to steal from Unkar Plutt.

The hooded man sighs and then lifts a gloved hand. “You will continue to dissuade all buyers from acquiring this vessel,” his voice is soft but commanding and Rey begins to nod along with Plutt without realising.

“I will dissuade any buyers from acquiring this vessel,” Unkar Plutt repeats, voice now dreamy and detached. Rey frowns, the strange persuasive sound of the man’s voice still drifting around her head. What is happening?

“Leave,” the man says, hand waving slightly and Plutt turns and walks away without a word. Rey, hardly believing what she is hearing, stares at the black clad man in astonishment. Is he a magician?

Once alone the man sighs again, not moving until he walks into the depths of the ship. Rey shifts, knowing that the chance to leave is now clear but she follows the man in a stealthy silence from below. Jakku is not exactly the most exciting planet in the universe but Rey has always adored the fairy tales the old priest would tell her of the stars and worlds beyond. A part of her, which she knows to be childish, yearns for those stories to be real. Intrigued she settles on her hunches as the man stops in the main hold and after a pause he waves his hand at the holotable.

Blue light filters through the wire mesh hiding her and almost illuminates the hooded man as he sits and begins to search through the data. The light flickers and a faint voice issues through the room.

“Mother! Look at Chewie!” a child, about five or six, rides on the back of a Wookie. The boy rubs his hands and Rey thinks she sees something sparking between his palms before all the fur on the Wookie suddenly stands on end, completely covering the child. The boy’s mother, her back to the camera, laughs in shock.

“Ben! I don’t think Uncle Luke will approve...Han you better be recording this!”

“Making damn copies.”

The family laughs, the mother crouching over in hysterics before the image is gone with a savage flick of the man’s fingers. Rey, smiling openly, lowers the cloth from her mouth, eager to see more but the man does not seem interested in seeing any more, in fact he seems to be doing the exact opposite.

“Delete File. Delete File. Delete File.” The electronic voice repeats over and over and with each small glimpse of this family she catches only to be destroyed Rey becomes increasingly more angered. How could he? Some people have no happy memories of families at all but he is methodically deleting it as if it means nothing.

She rises before catching herself but it is too late. The man looks down and directly at her. The blue light from a hologram he has not deleted shines down on her clearly and his reflection shines in the darkness of her goggles.

“Who are you?” he asks, deeply surprised and the sound of his voice snaps Rey out of her paralysis. His eyes flick to her mouth, the only part of her visible before she turns on her heels and runs in a low crouch, scurrying to get out. The only way is up so she slams her shoulder against a hatch and flips it open but the man is already there. A hand grabs her arm and swings her around but Rey is ready. With a hiss she brings her staff around and jabs it forward. He grunts as it slams into his chest but he does not let go. He pushes her against a wall, trapping her staff between them.

“Get off!” she swivels her wrist, trying to free herself. Dark eyes glare at her, though he seems more annoyed than angry.

“You have no right to be here,” he says and she is glad to hear how breathless he is. She must have got him good.

“And you have no right to delete those files!”

“I have every right, the only right,” he says and she sees his lips curl in the shadow of his hood. Whoever he is, whatever, Rey knows when to back down. He is dangerous, he can make people do whatever he wants with a simple word.

“Let me go, I was never here,” she keeps her voice steady. His fingers tighten around her wrist, his eyes darting from the dark glass of her goggles to her lips.

“You saw nothing.”

“I saw nothing,” she repeats but the detached feeling that had seemed to come over Plutt does not affect her and his voice shakes. Whatever he had done to the junk dealer has not worked on her. However, he does not need to know that.

The fingers gripping her wrist loosen until he drops his hand but does not move back. Pressed against a wall Rey keeps her eyes fixed to his as she slides away from him, breath blowing from her lips. Again his eyes trace over her mouth, as if for remembrance.

His scrutiny is useless, she is just one cloth covered scavenger amongst many. But she presses her lips together as he suddenly leans back and she is free. Rey rushes away, giving him one last look over her shoulder before she is clear of the ship. The hologram flickers blue behind him, frozen on an unsmiling boy with messy hair. The effect casts the tall man in silhouette until he lifts a hand and the image is gone and he is in shadow.

*

Days later she returns but finds no sign of the man. She searches through the ship's database, hoping something had been spared but he had removed every trace of the family she had seen. The only thing he had not destroyed was something not so easily found.

Slotted down the side of a bunk she had found the rag doll, dressed as an old resistance pilot. She imagines the little boy sleeping with it before it slips away from his hands, to be forgotten. Rey, far older than the boy in the films, takes the doll and makes sure not to lose it. It is the first one she has ever had and if the strange man does return the little pilot will be safe with her.


End file.
